Perzel's COPS Proposal: Another Underfunded Mandate?

State House Speaker John Perzel proposed this weekend a $225 million plan to put 10,000 new police on Pennsylvania's troubled streets. Heaven knows we need them. The plan has a fatal flaw though: it requires the communities to cover half the cost. The result: not much.

This is a typical Harrisburg GOP plan: kill good legislation with poison pill provisions. There's no way some of these cities can come up with their share. Already saddled with disproportionately high taxes places like Philadelphia, Reading and Allentown may as well stick some teeth under their pillows and hope for the tooth fairy.

What we need is the revival of the COPS program that President Bush gutted. The Clinton program funded 113,000 new community oriented policemen around the country. It resulted in significantly reduced violent crime. That program completely funded the new officers.

Perzel's plan would be more effective if he scaled it back to 5,000 and fully funded them.

Local governments don't need more unfunded or underfunded programs. The state and federal governments have been squeezing them for several years and property taxes are now causing a revolt as a result. If we need these police, and no one is going to argue we don't, fund them.